We asked three of our photographers the same three questions about highlights of their year 2021 in the field.
Marie-France Coallier
What are you most happy with about the year 2021?
There was at one point the reopening of cafes, places where I could leave my car and settle down to work. The reopenings have helped morale a lot by making it possible to work in a slightly more ergonomic context, sitting at a table with a coffee rather than in my car freezing. Seeing colleagues again, too, especially at the end of the year. I went back to the office every day for a week or two before it all closed.
What did you find the most difficult in 2021?
Due to the labor shortage, cafes and restaurants have closed their dining rooms for lack of personnel to promote drive-thru. So I often found myself in front of closed doors, unable to work inside. I found myself at square one with bad memories. But it is sure that in 2021, we knew the issues, since we had already experienced them in 2020.
What do you hope to find in 2022?
Everyone wants a return to normal. We all hope the pandemic will eventually end. In 2020, we believed it would only last a few weeks. Naively, we all thought it wouldn’t last that long, until the day I met DD Caroline Quach and that I asked her what she thought about it. She was talking about 2022 for the return of travel. It is certain that the vaccination opened the doors to us all, with a certain freedom to resume our activities, to go to cafes, to meet people, to attend shows. We all want to move on. Find other solutions for the overall health of the planet. Resume our travels. Resume our normal lives.
Jacques Nadeau
What are you most happy with about the year 2021?
I’m happy for the people who have had COVID-19 and got away with it, especially the elderly. I can give an example: a lady, Jacqueline Sénécal, who was in CHSLD Herron… I helped her mother get her out so that she could go to another CHSLD. They have known war. You imagine ? You are all alone, lying in your room, and the funeral service passes by your door two or three times a day. It can’t be easy. You say to yourself: when will it be my turn?
What did you find the most difficult in 2021?
To see people suffer without being able to do anything. To see people leave, because of COVID-19 or other illnesses. It’s hard to see old people leaving for all kinds of reasons, including my brother [Michel Nadeau], of course. But we must not let ourselves go in the whirlwind of insecurity and negativism. This is what strikes me as the most dangerous. You can feel it in the interviews, you hear it in the media.
What do you hope to find in 2022?
For 2022, we must learn to live from day to day. We don’t know at all how it’s going to turn out. To look for ideas for stories, it is not easy. We find by walking around, going to see places how it goes. There were a lot of people. Now there is no one. We are going for a walk and we are looking for subjects. When you feel good, walking outside, you find ideas. It’s a little hard to say. We have always heard that the strongest will win. But at the same time, in this law of the strongest, each of us will have to strengthen himself within himself.
Valerian Mazataud
What are you most happy with about the year 2021?
There has really been a cultural comeback. There were a lot of projects that the artists had kept aside for almost a year. Suddenly, to be able to see them in real life, to find this rhythm a little, it was quite pleasant. And this year, I had the chance to go to the North Shore, in Abitibi. These are not reports from abroad, but it is very cool and exotic. Being on the road, moving, going out of town and devoting yourself to a subject has been a big plus this summer and fall.
What did you find the most difficult in 2021?
The weariness side of it all, of the pandemic. We realize that it lasts. We are still in the midst of this theme. Even for the photos. We always work with masked people, we have to keep our distance in groups and we have to deal with all these details of sanitary measures while trying to do our job. It is already quite complicated to make photo reports, and there, I find that the pandemic which lasts offers a golden excuse to communication officers to deny access to photographers or journalists to certain places.
What do you hope to find in 2022?
More land, less restrictions. I would have liked very much to resume reporting abroad. It doesn’t bode well. Like everyone else, I want to see the end of this passage. Seeing topics that are no longer tainted by the pandemic, that would be something that I would very much like.